Eight Rejected Photographs from Hughes's Wallet
by WargishBoromirFan
Summary: Maes Hughes may carry a lot of pictures on him, but he doesn't show all of them to everyone. There are a few that not even Roy knows he has. T for language and violence in later chapters.
1. Blurred

A/N: Arakawa owns, I just borrow. This fic is about half of my november manga opus, although it is the shorter half.

* * *

This story starts, as many stories do, with a pair of boys lying lazy in the grass, staring up towards the sky. One, still fiddling with his bent glasses, tilts his head up slightly to consider his companion. The other, lying head to head across from him as if they were two twisted lengths of bumpy rail on a coal mine cart's track, has extended a hand as if to grasp the heavens. 

"A dirigible trail," the shorter boy decides, extending his pointer finger and caressing it along the length of the cloud.

"You don't have the least bit of poetry in your soul, do you?" The other removes his twisted frames in disgust and allows the distant phantom shapes to go blurry for a while as he twists the glasses in his hands.

"A dirigible would get us out of here," the one accused of poetical soullessness counters easily. Already, he has grown broader of shoulder and sturdier of build than his companion. "I'd settle for a hot air balloon."

"Where would you go, Roy?" The tone is mocking, but there is eagerness for the answer laced within its rises and falls. That, and perhaps a bit of fear. The next time, there could be more damage done than simply a twisted earpiece to the old wire frames.

"Away. Somewhere. I don't know." The stockier boy pauses and pushes dark hair from his eyes. "Where do you want to go?"

"I thought you were leading this expedition into the unknown." The glasses are set aside as a lost cause. He will have to sneak them into his grandfather's workshop. At least he will still have one place left to run to, even if he gets caught.

"I'm not poetic enough," Roy throws the taunt back with the ease of a teasing cat. He, too, tries to look behind his head. "No wonder. All you've got is imagination. Let me see those."

Moving nothing but his arm, the taller boy fumbles for his glasses and passes them over. Behind him, he can hear Roy rise and swear, a word they learned years ago from a forgotten source without ever really quite learning its meaning.

"Try not to break them, please. My folks will be angry enough as it is." Letting his arm fall above his head, he can feel the grass around it prickle back into standing position, like dozens of tiny, pointed green villagers that had collapsed under the weight of his friend.

"It's okay. I think I've got them." A few more muttered curses, and then Roy turns back into his field of blurred vision. "Try 'em now," the shorter boy directs, opening the folded earpieces and turning them towards the lanky boy's face.

The latter reaches up, gingerly examining the bridge and tiny screws before trying the supposedly fixed glasses on. Roy has a deft hand for all his strength, but thoughtlessness and new muscles have overcome his care more than once. They fit surprisingly well; and with but a few more adjustments, the frame fits as comfortably as it ever has over his boxed ears and sore nose. "Thanks," he says, focusing past the mud, grass stains, and flecks of dried unidentified bodily fluids. "You sure you don't want some ice on that?" he asks, pointing towards Roy's discolored left eye.

"Nah, I'll live. I did someone some good today, and this is my way of remembering it." Roy pushes his bangs away from his face once more before standing up, his lips cracking open again as he smiles. If she were not so busy fussing over their injuries, the taller boy suspects that Roy's mother would be dragging him away to the barber shop again.

"Hmph. I'd hate to see the day you do everybody some good. I don't think I'd survive it." Unwillingly, he sits up as well, reaching a hand up to Roy to be pulled staggeringly to his aching feet.

"Nonsense," Roy says, taking most of his friend's weight to his shoulders with a grunt. "You kicked ass today, Hughes. Where'd you find that knife, though? I didn't think we were allowed to have them at school."

Hughes gives a tight half-smile, feeling his own swollen lips in danger of cracking open. He is fairly certain that no one managed to hit him hard enough to lose a tooth, but he runs his tongue across them again, half-convinced that he felt his back molars rattle when he stood. "We aren't."

He offers no more on their slow, painful walk home. Neither does Roy. They will get there, and for now, that is enough.


	2. Torn

A/N: Not my characters, fortunately for them. Mangaverse. This probably is my least favorite chapter of this fic, but that's because like Roy, it wanted to go all over the place.

* * *

Maes Hughes was never in a hurry to save the world. He knew that the rest of the world, - even the rest of Amestris, for that matter - could have happily forgotten about his little town on the edge of nowhere in particular, and in turn, he was content to ignore them all equally. Geography was for nerds, and glasses aside, Hughes did not consider himself a nerd. The glasses were purely to stave off the ladies. That, and to protect his eyes when he and Mustang ended up in another fight.

Roy Mustang was the reason Hughes would even consider trying to save the world, or at least any part of it beyond his own folks. Roy had grown up in a house four doors down and one street over from the Hughes's place, allowing the boys to see into one another's backyards on a clear winter day, once the leaves had fallen. When he wasn't simply observing those around him, Roy had a tendency to dream of a way out of their town. Hickstown in the Sticks, he would call it, or simply the most backwater place left on the face of the planet. Hughes insisted that this wasn't fair; Roy had no idea if even Central City was half so nice as this place.

"There's the trouble, Hughes," his shorter friend had complained. "I want to go see it for myself. I want go see everything, see what's best in the world, and bring it to the people. I want everyone to get the best they can." Roy's hand pushed aside the map he had been poring over, letting the tense laminated paper roll itself back into a haphazard cylinder and continue rolling until it fell from his paper-strewn desk.

"We can't see everything. Why don't you just read about all these places, if you're so eager to learn about them?" Hughes closed his own textbook and laid it aside unmarked. Even when he enjoyed the subject, (and Maes had never much enjoyed history,) given the choice between writing an essay and hearing out his best friend, homework would always fall by the wayside.

"It's not the same," Mustang replied, leaning back in his seat. "A book won't let you smell the air, hear the sounds, see what's really going on. A book could make even Xerxes sound boring, or this place sound exciting."

"That's because it is, if you know where to look," Hughes interrupted him.

"Or if you know how to cause trouble," Roy acknowledged with a light laugh. "But I know there's more out there than reading could offer about it. Teacher always says you ought to check your sources anyway, right?"

Hughes had grumbled about this, but there was really nothing he could ever say to convince Roy otherwise. Roy was simply too stubborn to change his mind, and moreover, the more Hughes prodded at his friend's decision, the more he was willing to admit that Mustang might have a point. Not that even Roy could convince him that this town was worthless, but perhaps, Hughes had allowed, it would be nice to explore a little further away from their homeland before settling down. At least, before Hughes settled down. He wondered if Roy ever would. And until that distant day dawned, somebody had to watch Mustang's back.

Sure, Roy was fairly strong for his age, (in truth, stronger than Hughes, though the taller boy had always refused to admit this fact without some fresh burden of proof,) but strength and stubbornness alone wouldn't win every fight, let alone prevent them in the first place. Their teacher and their mothers always insisted that Mustang was smart - Maes's own mother had frequently annoyed him by asking why he could never pick up on math and the sciences as quickly as his "bright little friend," occasionally to the point of earning Roy some undeserved antagonism - but this brilliance was sometimes lacking when it came to intelligent things to say around his peers. Roy's mouth was smart enough, certainly, and Hughes found his wit to be plenty sharp, but Mustang had never developed enough common sense to recognize when it was better to remain dumb. Where Hughes saw somebody else's battle, Roy saw a chance to prove his mettle, even if the previously involved parties both significantly outweighed and outnumbered him, and were not particularly interested in the services of an overly arrogant moderator with the build of a mid-weight wrestler on an as yet smaller scale.

Hughes was not one to fight, if it wasn't necessary. If it were anyone else, he would consider the scrapes and bruises Roy ended up with as just deserts - and not in the sense of manfully-earned battle wounds, as Mustang usually did. However, Roy was Roy, so Hughes did put some effort into covering his back. After all, even before the lines of classmate and neighborhood alliances had been scuffed in the sand, Roy had been getting involved with his fights, standing beside him against anyone from the crazy mutt someone had brought in during their first year to their teacher herself. The more Roy stood with him, the more Hughes found it best to finish both his own fights and Roy's before they had properly begun. Mustang had a disturbing flair for attracting trouble, and when left to his own devices, he could not even gauge just how deep he was into it. Rather than wait for Roy to make things worse for all involved, Hughes tried to step in with words, or blades, if necessary.

Around Mustang, Hughes was likely to get hurt and get into trouble, but he was also likely to dream. The taller boy didn't know how Roy managed to be so myopically focused on that vague goal of his without really taking the time to show the same world that he was so eager to protect how much he cared for it. It was up to Hughes then, to make sure that Roy saw the individuals and not just the vague notion of people worth protecting. Hughes would have to insure that whenever Roy finally did get them out of their hometown, he'd be able to see that every part of the rest of the world was Hickstown in the Sticks to somebody.

Hughes was no philosopher or seer or any of that crap, though he thought himself a fair hand at poetry. This revelation concerning his place in Roy Mustang's plans didn't come all at once, but through the years with the scars and scratched lenses and speed of the knives between his fingers. It took but the work of a single conversation, however, for the plan to fall to pieces before Maes Hughes's eyes.

"Who is this Hawkeye guy, anyway?" Hughes questioned angrily.

"Only one of the best alchemists alive today," Roy said, stuffing another shirt into his suitcase.

"I haven't heard of him." Hughes stacked the heavy textbooks and other assorted reading material beside the suitcase on the dresser. If he had had whatever talents this supposed "Flame Alchemist" claimed to possess, the letter on the other side would have a smoldering hole through it from his gaze.

"He doesn't like to go out a lot," Roy said with a shrug, re-rolling his socks in order to stuff them tighter into the overcrowded suitcase.

"I thought alchemists were supposed to serve the people and all that junk. Don't know how you can do that if you never leave your house." Hughes let the next book fall with a slam, missing his pile and sending the book in question tumbling to the floor.

"Well, he's teaching _me,_ isn't he? Master Hawkeye probably has a good reason for not getting out more. Maybe he does, but just does it undercover. You don't know, Hughes." Hughes was about ready to throw the book at Roy, if only to wipe the smugly arrogant expression off of his face. Roy noticed his glare at last and attempted to change tactics. "Hey, think of it this way: I get out, and you still get to stay in Hickstown with everybody you like. You never really wanted to come along. I know you were only trying to humor me. It's okay; you don't have to do that anymore now. I'll be out of your way and not dragging you into any more stupid fights."

Setting the book upon the pile more carefully, Hughes gave in to the basic instinct. "Don't drag yourself in, either. You're too crazy, Roy. Who's going to keep you from getting in over your head?"

"I can watch my own back," Mustang insisted, shoving him in return for the slug that had landed on his shoulder. "Once I learn alchemy, I'll be better at it than you are."

The taller boy huffed in disbelief. "It'll take better eyes than a hawk's to learn to do that."

"Once I'm an alchemist, I can get those." Roy lifted the stack and turned away, shrugging as he dumped them into another bag. "You do what you want, Maes. I'm moving on."

"Go on then." Hughes tossed up his hands and headed for the door. "We'll see how long you last without me."

"Whatever, man," Roy dismissed him. "Just don't die and don't get in my way so you're not a nuisance." Hughes left without saying anything. He didn't come to the platform, either, even though his mother insisted that he join half the rest of town at the train station to see the bright young Mustang off. Hughes spent the afternoon sulking in the car, though he irritably informed anyone who mentioned it that he was simply busy contemplating his place in the world, thank you ever so much.


	3. Crumpled

A/N: Not my manga, though certainly mangaverse for spellings and more common haircolors amongst a certain group. Ah, nothing like a key difference between the character's viewpoint and one's own personal values to thoroughly muddy the philosophical waters...

* * *

As soon as the rest of Amestris took notice of his town, Hughes wished they hadn't. Civic pride was all well and good; he certainly wouldn't have minded showing off the little local landmarks to a curious tourist. Despite their falling out over Roy's abrupt departure, Maes Hughes could admit now that the seeds of wanderlust Mustang had planted over five years ago had at least grown enough that he would be interested in a conversation concerning cultural comparisons. This, however, was hardly how Hughes had wanted to be introduced to the big, wide, and unexpectedly bloody world beyond home.

The monk had come as a part of a large group of refugees, most of them related to each other, some way or another. The people of the town had been wary of them at first, especially the two dozen or so grown men who watched the world through sleepless red eyes, but as the local children snuck from the old one-room schoolhouse to run wild in the forests with their new olive-skinned playmates and the women exchanged recipes from east and west, the town let out a collective sigh of relief and welcomed the Ishvalan immigrants to its bosom. That, in Hughes's mind, had been the first mistake.

He had been in the tavern when the second mistake happened. Every town and every generation, Hughes reflected, must have its share of Roy Mustangs. Those individuals were annoying and troublesome and caused almost more mental anguish than their company was worth, but they eventually left. It was part of what made them so damned amazingly, lovably obnoxious. Every town also had it share of Shawn Yorks, unfortunately, and Shawn York was definitely not the brother Maes had never had. York was not the brilliant young man who ran away to be an alchemist and impress them all, even though he certainly seemed to think he would do so. York wasn't even a dreamer, really; he just got into fights to make sure that nobody rose higher than him, not to bring others above their conflicts.

That night, however, York had picked the wrong guy to drag back down. Hughes had been at a corner table with a beer and a pretty young woman from the new housing projects, intent upon establishing intercultural relations when the slightly older man had walked into the bar with his friends, already stinking heavily of alcohol. Hughes gave them one exasperated look, made a comment to his date concerning boys that couldn't hold their liquor, and resolved to ignore them until they left.

If Roy had been there, he might have paid more attention to who York and his friends had decided to harass. If Roy had been there, they probably would have gone straight for Mustang, a guaranteed fight and one they probably would have won at that, and left the old man alone. But Hughes was there with Elania, and was therefore suitably and willingly distracted until the priest was on his feet and York was flying through the air. "You shall never insult the name of our God again," the monk said, fury burning in his red eyes as he stared at the youngster who had been flung to the floor.

"Feh," York said, wiping blood and spittle from his mouth. "Your god can't even maintain your stupid land. What's he gonna do about it if we talk about him, you old hobo?" Some of York's posse moved in, circling the white-haired man predatorily.

At their table in the corner, Huges reached for his date's arm. "Do you want to get out of here?" he asked her in an undertone.

Elania shook her head, one trembling dark hand clutching white-knuckled at the table as if she were attempting to force herself to remain seated. "He's my grandfather's brother. He helped get us here. I should help him, but if I can't, I can at least be here for him in spirit."

"I'm sure he'd appreciate it, but I think he'd probably appreciate knowing you were safe more." How many times had he had this conversation? At least he didn't have to try to hold the girl back from the fight while they were talking. She was so cute when she was angry, Hughes thought absently.

"I'm staying," she said, a sense of finality strong in her voice, despite her shaking hands. "I won't make trouble, but I cannot turn away from the trials Ishvala sends me."

"Then let's see what we can't do to meet these trials." Hughes could hardly believe himself. He had tried so hard to stay out of fights for years, and now here he was getting involved with somebody else's business again, just because of a pretty girl with tears threatening to spill out of her big crimson eyes.

_It's not really getting involved in somebody else's fight,_ he tried to explain it to himself. _I'm… I'm just preventing this from getting worse before it gets to me._ The half smile he offered Elania as he revealed his throwing knife gave lie to this chain of reasoning. Either way, the blade was in play now, and Hughes was already away from the table.

York's companions were bigger than Hughes, but they had also had more to drink, so as long as he had surprise on his side, it was easy enough to send the first three tumbling to the floor. Hughes had reversed the blade for now; there was no sense in causing more injury than necessary or revealing all his weapons if he didn't yet need them. He had so few surprises left against former schoolyard bullies that it seemed a shame to waste them.

The priest turned from York, whom the old man had sent tumbling a second time. Hughes wondered briefly if all Ishvalan geezers were built like oxen, or if it was just their holy men. For a guy who had seen sixty years, easily, the priest didn't seem to have lost much speed or muscle mass. Hughes was shortly in a position to better appreciate just how much strength the old monk still possessed. He never saw the fist coming, but he felt it as solidly on his jaw as he felt the table legs and floor against his back abruptly thereafter. "You wish to face me on your own, then?" The old priest crossed his arms, ignoring the other five combatants as they struggled woozily to their feet. York was already crawling for the door.

Hughes slid the knife back into its sheath up his sleeve, checking his open palm before gingerly reaching for his jaw. The throwing knives he carried this evening were pointed instead of being particularly sharp, but even the blunt side of a butter knife could cut under enough pressure. "I was trying to help you," Hughes said, wiping away the blood that was rising to his lips.

"Why would you do that?" Red eyes narrowed in Huges's direction and a white eyebrow that appeared too pale for the dark skin surrounding it quirked in suspicion.

"They taught me to help those in need," Hughes said. Establishing that his jaw was still useable, even if it was currently swelling, he went on to consider the damage to his back, limbs, and extremely sore tailbone.

"Your parents?" the old Ishvalan monk asked.

"Mostly," Hughes lied. Just because he was indebted to the boy and time had taken away most of the sting of the abrupt departure didn't mean that he had completely forgiven Roy Mustang.

"Your god taught you too, then?" The priest smiled slightly. Somehow, Hughes failed to find that grin to be particularly comforting.

"I don't know; I guess you could say that." Gingerly, Hughes rose from the floor and overturned table.

He found himself straight back on the ground. Hughes never wanted the responsibility of playing god, but speaking for him was starting to look better and better. It seemed a much less painful position from which to consider moral and spiritual debates, if this priest was any example.

"What sort of god could a man like you follow?" the priest asked. Hughes was becoming heavily convinced that York had knocked a screw loose in the old holy man's head. How York had done it by connecting his face with the geezer's fist was beyond Hughes, but the young man didn't claim to be an expert at physiology.

He never claimed to be much of an expert at faith, either. Too wealthy to depend upon miracle cults and too out of touch with the rest of civilization to amass much enthusiasm for a regional religion, the majority of the town had been quietly agnostic before the arrival of the Ishvalan refugees, if not outright gleefully atheistic. Hughes had been much the same. Sure, old Greek and Christian and other ancient legends could be cool to read about, but even Hughes knew enough about science and alchemy to fully trust his soul to them. "Dunno, what sort of a god is this Ishvala?"

The dark hand curled into a fist once more. "Do not mock him, boy."

"No, really, I'm interested in learning more. He obviously means a lot to you and Elania," Hughes talked fast, hoping he could at least keep his legs under him this time. He did not yet dare to glance back at his date while things were going so disastrously, amazingly, messily wrong. She would never go out with him again. Hughes tried to prepare himself to face that. He was having more luck cosigning himself to the equally inevitable next punch. At least his glasses would afford his face a little protection. He just would have worn his nice pair to a bar, wouldn't he?

It never landed on him. Later, Hughes always swore that he saw the bullet hit before he even heard the gunshot, but he tended to attribute this to shock. It surely hadn't really happened that quickly. It only seemed like one minute there had been an angry old priest in front of him, and the next, there was only a corpse. Even head wounds generally left their victims twitching for a few bloody seconds before the person realizes it is dead.

He vaguely remembered Elania crouching beside the body on her way out the door. She had not lingered; violence was still heavy in the air and wherever her grandfather's brother was, the old priest was no longer facing anything she could witness. The tattoo of her flat-heeled shoes against the concrete sidewalk would come back to haunt Hughes later, even more than the sight of the body or the smell of blood and gun smoke insinuating itself evilly into the normal stenches of the bar.

"You all right, man?" someone asked him, the tone of voice as normal as daylight.

"That was pretty brave of you, kid, but sometimes you gotta put a rabid dog down," another voice added. A hand slapped him companionably on the shoulder, but Hughes jerked away. "The army could use a few more guys with that type of guts."

"Especially with that type causing trouble in the east," the first speaker added, toeing the body with a heavy boot.

"I - I ought to get home," he said, stumbling to his feet.

"See you around, kid." Hughes was never sure which of the recruitment officers had shot the old man. He never asked.

Return they did, after the bomb in the schoolhouse went off. Fifteen were dead, and another twenty children had been injured. Amongst the casualties was listed the main suspect, one Elania Sirvinati, age twenty-one, female, formerly of Ishval. The report Hughes read never mentioned how wide her eyes - red as blood - had been, or the contrast of her light golden hair and olive skin and her guts - brown-purple-red - and the blackened fragments of the bomb. He never asked for another viewpoint. The only question Hughes asked was "Where do you want me?"


	4. New: Tampered

A/N: Not mine, not even the spoilers in the notes. I do have some continuations for my WIPs in the works, but my Roy muse has been conspiring with my Cheza and Kiba muses to throw me off track of my main Wolf's Rain work after Chapter 102. Those who've read both mangas know why. And because he's now "twice as cool as everyone else," as a certain original Fullmetal Anime icon* ironically predicted, Mustang and Hughes need at least a little fluffy bromance moment. Personally, I was just excited that I wasn't completely off the mark with writing Chris as a single parent. So far...

*You can find it here, for example: photobucket albums/a42/b2wm/Icons%20from%20others/Roydoubleeyepatch .gif (Without the spaces.)

* * *

"Oh, give me those," Mustang grumbled exasperatedly, snatching at Hughes's glasses. "Good thing you didn't try to go into the family business; you always spend uncalled for amounts of time fiddling with them after every fight." Instead of attempting to fix them manually as he had done when they were children, Roy knelt and awkwardly sketched a design in the dirt on the floor. Placing the glasses in the center and his hands on the edge, the dark-eyed man set off the alchemic reaction, bringing the smell of ozone into the musty cell.

"Why are you doing this?" Hughes asked suspiciously, not sure that the next feat his old friend had learned from Master Hawkeye would be quite so beneficial to him. There was a reason the two ensigns had been thrown in the brig to cool off for the night and would be stuck on latrine digging duty for the next week, along with whatever other demeaning manual punishment their NCO could come up with.

"Practice," Roy told him innocently, though Maes didn't believe him for a minute. There had always been too much going on beneath that messy dark hair for Hughes to believe that Mustang wouldn't have ulterior motives even if he was fixated on chasing down a girl in a miniskirt. "Master Hawkeye taught me how to fix his."

"It's just as well you didn't take up our family's trade. You might put my grandfather out of business." Say what one might about his alchemy master, Roy had done an excellent repair.

"Well, I am trying to use my skills for more than just fixing your sorry ass." Mustang tried to give him a friendly cuff on the shoulder, though perhaps he held back more from the cumbersome handcuffs than any pity for the former childhood friend that had landed him in this mess. It was only fair, after all. Maes blamed Roy for landing him in the military, though he'd signed the forms with his own hand for reasons beyond Roy's old dreams. It was just that many of those reasons could be traced back to the dreams that had become Hughes's, as well.

"Pity you took up your mother's work," Hughes added in an equally "innocent" tone before Mustang's head could swell too much. The scheming young alchemist had been chasing after a very specific girl in a miniskirt, after all.

"Excuse me?" Mustang's question dropped the temperature of the cell by a few degrees. Roy had never cared what names were thrown his way, but many a schoolyard bully had picked a fight merely by insulting Chris Mustang's very ancient profession.

"I cut my finger while peeling potatoes bad enough to get sent to the infirmary. Twice." The gray-eyed man grunted his disbelief. "I still know how to handle a knife, Roy. I just wanted to see her - isn't she just the most glorious woman you've ever met with those gorgeous green eyes and that soft voice and the gentle way she handles bandages and -" Hughes was going wildly of topic, but he didn't care. He probably wouldn't have stopped if Mustang hadn't let out a groan of a chuckle.

"Yeah, I get it, Hughes." Roy brought his hands up to his face in a belated attempt to hide his smile. "She's wonderful, and I made a pass at her."

"I've been trying to get her to go on a date with me for three weeks," Maes admitted. "Gracia always says she's on call on weekends, but she seems like she'd be willing enough to risk it for you."

"Anyone ever tell you that you can be a little intense when it comes to emotional attachments?" Roy asked. "It seems like you've only gotten worse since we were kids."

"I'm intense? Have you seen yourself recently?" Okay, so maybe he was a little intense. Sometimes. Roy could make even his friends feel like they were being lit on fire with that stare of his.

"Maybe so," Mustang acknowledged. "But I don't wear it on my sleeve. Save the pictures of Hickstown for the third date."

"What? I ought to use the first two just talking about my amazing buddy in the military?"

"No. Be yourself, Hughes, just tell her about the hot brunette that your idiot buddy in the academy tried to go after." Roy gave him a lopsided grin. "She'll either love it or try to talk the higher ups into never letting you near the hospital ever again."

"Thanks," Hughes deadpanned. "That's all the confidence I needed."

Roy put a companionable hand on his friend's shoulder. "Tuesday nights. Always check the duty roster, Hughes."

Certainly their names would be appearing upon it often enough.


	5. Dark and Burnt

A/N: If I owned them, I wouldn't have so much trouble finding consistent spellings for the names of two certain kickass lady soldiers now, would I? Until then, I'll try to go with the manga and work in alternates as possible.

* * *

Breathing. It had seemed a simple thing, so long ago; something that people just did naturally. During early childhood tantrums, it seemed harder not to breathe, requiring a conscious decision and all of the willpower a four-year-old could muster. Had it really been that uncomplicated?

Hughes took a slow breath in, releasing the dart at the same time as his diaphragm. This exercise, too, had become automatic over the years, allowing his knives to become more and more accurate. The drill sergeant had declared Hughes a natural at the shooting range and had even encouraged him to take up some sniper training.

"I can't, sir," Hughes had said, holding his salute as straight as possible. "Amestris needs her soldiers in the field, sir. I'll just have to learn from experience, sir." Experience! That he had gotten enough of!

If he had had the chance to do it all over again, though, Hughes still wasn't sure he would have taken the extra training. It would have meant more time with Gracia in Central, certainly, but Hughes wasn't sure he would have been able to breathe easier knowing that other men and women had stopped breathing because he hadn't been there.

Maes Hughes was rising through the ranks quickly, and he wasn't convinced that it was due to his skills or winning personality so much anymore. The top brass he had met hardly seemed to be charmers, even while off duty. And if he was honest with himself, Maes Hughes would have to say that even his marksmanship skill alone wasn't enough to account for his captaincy. It all came down to breathing, in the end, and knowing when to just keep your mouth shut and when to sneak around the presiding officer's back.

Hughes threw another dart and watched it swerve off the thin metal ring separating the secondary ring from the bullseye. No one had felt like playing him today.

The hot, dry climate wasn't exactly conducive to easy living. Dust in your lungs, sand in your eyes, and scorpions in your shoes, the more cynical grunts had summarized. That was a start to describing Ishval, certainly, but it left out some of the other fun: freezing nights, jackals wild or otherwise sneaking into camp to steal your supplies, and the smoke and ash that threatened to displace the dust in your lungs… And the fires. Those were the fun parts. The other parts, like trying to turn suicide charges into something survivable, like the children and old men with guns in their hands, like trying to meet your comrades' eyes… Those were less fun, especially when the other soldiers looked back. Some of those eyes were innocent still, some were haunted, a few, like Kimbley, were just plain manic. Even the mad bomber known as the Crimson Alchemist didn't scare Hughes so much as those eyes that never focused, though. Sometimes, they didn't seem to have to look to stare right through Hughes's marrow.

Hughes hit dead center with the last dart and wondered if Jean would let him borrow a cigarette. The man seemed to have an inexhaustible supply, but with the way Havoc went through them, Hughes wasn't too surprised to learn how protective Sergeant Jean Havoc could be of his tobacco horde.

"Still at it, Captain?" The androgynous looking rookie peeking into the tent tended to be fairly shy and painfully formal, but Hughes had gotten her to loosen up enough to offer the name Riza in place of Private E. Hawkeye. Her eye still twitched in embarrassment every time he called her by that nickname in public.

"Nah, I'm done," Hughes replied, gathering up the darts. "Unless you want to have a friendly little competition," he offered. The girl was good; better than he was over short to medium distances. She wasn't as strong, but Hawkeye hadn't skipped sniper training. He'd had plenty of reason to appreciate the extra time she had taken for it, especially once the sniper course had been moved into Eastern HQ and then Ishval itself.

"Not right now, sir," Hawkeye said, settling herself on a camp chair.

"Something got you down? I always find news from home cheers me up. Have you seen the latest letter that Gracia sent me?" Hughes reached inside his coat, pulling out the sun-faded picture that rested next to his breast.

"I believe half the platoon has, sir," Hawkeye allowed herself the barest hint of a smile, although she was careful to keep her voice level and professional.

Hughes smiled back; glad to see the girl was still capable of making a joke. "You know, I ran into an old friend of mine today, and you know what Roy told me? He said I sounded like some two-line soldier from an old movie who spends his whole scene pining away for his sweetheart before he gets killed."

"Not while I'm on watch, Captain," Hawkeye told him.

"Thanks, Riza. It's always good to know we've got a little hawk on our shoulders, even if this place isn't exactly fit for angels." Hughes checked briefly outside the tent flap before seating himself next to her.

Hawkeye nodded her thanks, staring at the dirt floor with a preoccupied expression. "This friend of yours… Roy… If you don't mind me asking, Captain Hughes, would this be the Flame Alchemist, Major Roy Mustang?"

"You know him?" Hughes asked, and then his memory finally clicked the puzzle pieces into place. Unless the unofficial former Flame Alchemist had discovered a way of making himself appear at least somewhat feminine and much younger than he actually was, there was no way that Riza could be the master Roy had gone to study under all those years ago, but just because he hadn't been known to leave his house much at that time didn't mean that old Master Hawkeye could never have had a daughter.

"I knew him," Riza replied softly, still staring at the floor. Hughes recognized that expression. He'd worn something similar enough, seven years ago as his parents and grandfather and Mrs. Mustang had waved longingly after that train.

"He hasn't changed in the least, has he?" There, just under Gracia's photo, Hughes found the last of the cigarettes he'd stolen from Havoc last week. He stuck it in his mouth and fumbled for his lighter.

"I'd say he's gotten handsomer, sir, but then I always did think he looked good in uniform." Hawkeye glanced outside the tent.

"That silver pocket watch does make him strut more, certainly," Hughes said, taking a puff and letting the smoke fill his nostrils.

Riza Hawkeye smiled at something out of Hughes's line of vision and let out a long breath. "That it does," she said. Hughes took another drag on his cigarette, content just to be breathing and to feel the corners of the photograph prickle against his heart. For the moment, he allowed himself to think that they might just make it out of Ishval alive.


	6. Faded

A/N: Arakawa's characters, and the philosophies are thanks to Captian Ironfounderson and the Brain, respectively.

* * *

Going home had been different. Central HQ wasn't Hicksville on the Sticks, but to Maes Hughes, it seemed as if he were right back where he'd started, trailing around after Roy Mustang and trying to aid his plans without letting anyone get hurt. The plans had become more grandiose, thanks in no small part to Hughes's big mouth, and the physical distance between the two men had increased again with their transfers, but at least he wasn't alone in watching Roy's back anymore. Jean Havoc and a few other of their more highly skilled drinking buddies had been snapped up by the colonel as fast as Roy could fill out the transfer forms, young Kain Fuery had been invited based upon reputation and then quickly added into the inner circle when that reputation proved to be only half the truth as far as loyalty was concerned, and even big Alex Louis Armstrong owed Mustang a favor or two, though Roy and his chief officers kept themselves a little distant from the Strong Arm Alchemist. 

Armstrong had been disgraced during the course of the war, after all, and while a connection to the higher-ups would be nice, Major Armstrong's cold-hearted, ruthless elder sister was not exactly the general they were looking for. Besides, Alex Armstrong… sparkled. There was no other word to properly describe the way the over-muscled, exceedingly friendly giant came across. Kain looked up to him, certainly, and Hughes appreciated how much of a fuss the major made over Hughes's family photos, but if Maes heard about one more item that had passed through generations of Armstrongs, he feared that the next thing that passed through the Strong Arm Alchemist was going to be a dagger.

Then, of course, there was Riza Hawkeye. Rumors of a romance between her and Mustang had become an open secret around the office, but despite even Hughes's best attempts at matchmaking, the two were coolly professional to one another, barely even showing enough to be counted as friendship at times. And yet, even outside of the office, even when Hughes left his friends to spend the whole day with Gracia, there she was at Mustang's flank, bullying Roy into finishing his work and keeping Hughes, Breda, and Havoc from coming up with too wild of a plan for the weekends they could get together again. She left the men to run loose once every two weeks, every other Friday, like clockwork, but even when she stepped outside the office to retrieve Roy's morning coffee, it was still the implied threat of what Riza would do when she found out about this that kept Havoc from smoking in a closed room, Breda from stealing everything out of the candy bowl, Falman from calling his girlfriend on military lines, and Fuery from spending all day fiddling with the perfectly serviceable communication equipment. Normally, it also kept Roy on task, or at least off the phone lines, calling up every woman he knew. There was no doubt that Hawkeye tried her best, but Hughes and Mustang were born procrastinators, and the two men outranked her, severely limiting her disciplinary options. As her boss and oftentimes seemingly completely dependent upon her, especially before he'd had his first cup of coffee for the day, Roy was still worse off than Hughes. There were times when Maes would ring Mustang's office and ramble on about Gracia and their coming baby, just to jerk his friend's chain. If Roy didn't slam the phone down himself, there tended to be a brief silence as the phone was handed over, followed by Hawkeye's cool reminder not to tie up the government lines with unimportant business.

"Hey, the birth of a baby sounds pretty important to me, Riza," Hughes had argued. "And you know that without Gracia I'd hardly be in a position to be sitting and chatting with you."

"Even so, sir," Hawkeye had said. "Personal business isn't the same as what is important to the greater needs of the state." This was followed by the sound of a click. Somehow, that soft, mechanical sound was never quite as satisfying as the initial slam and follow-up garbled cursing and readjusting of the receiver in its cradle that concluded a proper round of annoying Roy.

Hughes shook his head. They were a perfect match, weren't they? Riza was just as stupid about interpersonal relationships as Roy was, even if she hid it better. Well, with a little time, luck, and some of the old Maes mojo, they'd learn.

Hughes hung up the phone and called in for his three-hourly checkup with Gracia. She had been adapting well to the pregnancy so far, but it never hurt to be careful. This was their first born, after all, and Hughes was determined to be there every step of the way for this little one.

Hughes had seen kids growing up without their fathers around for much of the time, and while he respected Mustang and thought the Elric brothers were generally good boys at heart, all three of them were a little insane. Hell, psychosis was one of the larger factors in Edward Elric's profile, as far as Hughes was concerned. Ed was a four and a half foot (almost five, if you included the platform boots and the perpetual cowlick in the center of his long, messy bangs) package of a nice kind of insanity, generally speaking, of a very optimistic sort, but craziness followed in his wake nonetheless. Hughes didn't want that for his kid. Sure, it was quite possible that Roy's special brand of lunacy had rubbed off on Maes, but as long as his son or daughter had the opportunity to compare him to the rest of the world's variations on crazy, Hughes would count himself content. Someone would have to teach the kid how to deal with it.

"Hello?" There was the sound of that voice Hughes loved even more than his own. Ah, Gracia, the steadiest woman Hughes had ever met… What she saw in him, Hughes wasn't always sure, but he would do whatever he had to in order to keep her safe and happy.

"How's my favorite lady, Gracia?" Hughes curled up around the phone, ignoring the dirty looks his officemates shot at him. He'd still get his work done, so he had no reason to feel ashamed about stealing a little time with the one he loved.

"We're doing as well as the last time you called, dear." Gracia had received the nickname "Glacier" during her time as a nurse in the war, due to her coolness in a medical crisis. She was never quick to anger, but like her nickname, she could move a lot around if she was pushed far enough. That distance became shorter as the hormones went to work, and despite Mustang's urgings for Hughes to find something else to focus on - even going so far as to expect the daily calls to his desk, and Havoc's, and Breda's, and Falman's, and occasionally even Hawkeye's or Fuery's, - Hughes would rather risk pushing Gracia over the edge by being too solicitous than leave her alone when she needed him.

"Good, good," Maes said encouragingly. "You're not trying anything too stressful, are you? I'll take care of cleaning up under the furniture when I get home; don't do anything that might lead you to overextending yourself."

"I won't, Maes. Now, I don't want you stressing yourself, either. Do you need to get back to work?" That was his Gracia: calm and logical even when he was ready to run around manically passing out pictures to the whole office.

Hughes fiddled with his pen, sighing. The warrants were beginning to stack up, a bit. "Yeah, duty calls. As long as you'll be all right, then."

"We're fine," his wife insisted. "I love you, honey."

"I love you more, Gracie-babe." She laughed before she hung up. Now that, Hughes decided, was a satisfying end to a conversation. His fingers itched to pick the phone back up and call her back to tell her. Instead, he dialed Havoc's extension. "Hey, buddy," Hughes started, ignoring the long-suffering sigh at the other end.

"What do you want, Hughes?" Havoc asked around a cigarette. Hughes himself was trying to quit; Gracia said it wasn't good for the baby.

"Oh, nothing. I just called to chat a bit," Hughes admitted.

"I don't want to hear a thing about your wife," Havoc warned him off.

"Your date not go so well last night? I could give you a few tips if you like," Hughes started; mentally cobbling together a list of all the eligible females he knew who had not yet turned the gingery blond second lieutenant down. It seemed to get shorter every month.

"Now is not the time, Maes," Havoc cut him off firmly.

"You want to tell me about it?" Hughes swung around in his chair and lowered his voice.

"Right now all I really want is a smoke and some peace and quiet, but it seems I'm not gonna get either between Hawkeye, Mustang, and you," Havoc complained. Hughes heard the shuffling of papers in the background and guiltily completed a few forms of his own with the receiver pressed to his ear.

"What's Roy done this time?" Hughes asked.

"What do you think? Get his work done?" There was a pause and the sound of a slamming door. Jean Havoc sighed in relief at that noise. It took a lot to get Hawkeye mad enough to slam the door, at least the one to Roy's office. Breda, Armstrong, and the Elric brothers, on the other hand, seemed to do so as a matter of principle, at least until one of them wanted to sneak up on you. Hughes could blame it on more strength than coordination on the parts of Alphonse Elric and Major Armstrong, and more temper than sense out of the ever volatile Edward, but Heymans Breda Hughes knew too well to assume that the door-slamming, candy pilfering, and chess obsession was anything more than a front. Well, perhaps the chess was as real a mania as Hughes's preoccupation with his wife and child. The chubby redheaded man did like his strategy games of all sorts… Havoc grunted in reply to a garbled greeting. "Breda says not to call him," he passed on to Hughes.

"Has the colonel been… interfering with your dates again?" Hughes asked. He might have indulged in a bit of boyish bragging during his youth, but Mustang seemed determined to live up to every romantic and sexual nightmare people had ever imagined for him. And Roy, damn him, was confident and sneakily manipulative enough to get what he wanted.

"I don't want to talk about it," Havoc repeated, growling out the last words.

"You know, if we could get him to settle down, Roy would hardly be in a position to be stealing anyone else's girlfriend," Hughes suggested.

Havoc snorted. "You think we haven't tried? Hawkeye's got her cap set on him, all right, but neither of them will so much as admit it to the rest of us when they're sober. They say they're too worried about turning each other into targets or some such bullshit. It'd almost be easier if Hawkeye wasn't after him so that Roy could let himself go crazy… You think Riza and I could ever work?"

"Jean, as your friend and senior officer, I implore you not to go there right now. She'll hurt you," Hughes told him with more than a hint of seriousness behind his facetious tone. "Furthermore, Roy would hurt you. I've seen him go crazy, Havoc. It's not pretty."

"You're telling me," Havoc replied with another deep sigh. "So what do we do, Hughes?"

"Same thing we always do: help Roy take over the country so that he'll finally settle down and be out of our hair." Hughes lowered his voice, but he suspected that his officemates already knew.

"I just hope it works. He's killing me, man," Havoc said.

"You and me both," Hughes agreed, pushing the search warrant forms away from the photos on his desk. He was going to need more frame space soon. Lots of new frame space.


	7. Overexposed

A/N: Not my characters, although my nephew and father partially inspired a couple of the minor jokes. Surely, I wouldn't to happen to know a Maes Hughes of a cameraman, much less be related to him...

There's one more snapshot into Hughes's life coming up, and then a short epilogue. If you're interested, I originally had small doodles of the titular photos to accompany each chapter, and may upload them to my Livejournal (B2WM) at some point in the future once I can get the scanner working, but I'd really hesitate to call them fan_art._ There's a reason why I generally stick to the written word.

* * *

"Smile for Daddy, Elysia!" Hughes says, though it's hardly necessary. Their baby girl is just as photogenic as her mother, and Elysia has never complained about her father's shutterbug tendencies. Gracia has jokingly warned that the two Hughes ladies will probably end up blind from the near-constant flash glare, but their two year old loves the camera, and the camera loves Elysia. Maes Hughes knows that he will not be able to capture every precious moment of his daughter's childhood on film, but that never stops him from trying. 

The photographs join those of his wife and their friends in his office, giving Hughes an opportunity to talk to her even when he can't pick up the telephone. Elysia is still too young to hold clear conversations, although she is more than happy to ramble on disjointedly about her teddy's adventures and her "day today in my belly!" The girl is a Hughes, all right, her father thinks with pride: Elysia throws herself wholeheartedly into brightening people's lives. Not even Hawkeye can keep an entirely straight face when Maes insists that the first lieutenant talk to his daughter on the phone.

Roy, though, is something else. Just as when Hughes passes around pictures of Gracia, Mustang complains that he has absolutely no interest in looking at the latest shots of Elysia Hughes. Roy also insists that he doesn't want to hear about her over the phone, and weasels his way out of talking to her directly whenever he has the opportunity to pass the receiver to one of his subordinates.

Hughes, however, isn't fooled in the least. He knows that Roy is jealous; the way Mustang grins every time Elysia runs up to hug her "Uncle Roy" is proof enough that he likes the girl. It was high time Mustang started thinking about getting some foals and fillies of his own, and if it took Elysia to help him realize that, Hughes wouldn't begrudge his daughter her ability to do what he had been unsuccessful at.

"Cheese!" Elysia says, grinning widely at the photographer. Her first word had been "da," but she said it to Gracia while her mother was holding the camera. This time, though, there will be no confusion. Elysia knew the arms that held her as well as she knew the flash of his bulb.

"That ought to be a nice one, Maes," Roy says, handing the photo equipment back to Hughes. "But please remember that I've already seen it."

"Come on, you know you're curious as to whether it turned out as well as my shots," Hughes teases, letting his little green eyed girl fumble with the knobs on the camera. "We'll have to do a comparison to see if you could moonlight as a photographer once you get bored with alchemy and taking over Amestris."

Roy shrugs. "I guess everyone needs a hobby to do in their spare time."

Elysia reaches out a hand to grab at Roy. "Show Blimpie," she directs imperiously, pointing between her unrelated uncle and the teddy bear that has been sat just outside of the family photo shot.

Gracia takes hold of her blonde daughter's outstretched hand, lowering the pointer finger. "How do nice girls ask, Elysia?"

"Plwease?" the little girl adds dutifully, glancing up at her mother. Gracia has always been the disciplinarian; Maes will let his daughter get away with anything short of first degree murder, and even then, it would depend on the victim.

"We have to develop it first, Elysia-chan," Roy tries to explain.

"Show Blimpie please," the girl repeats. "He wants to see."

"I think I've got a few others that we could show Blimpie," Hughes suggests, throwing the strap around his neck and adjusting his grip on daughter before reaching for his overstuffed wallet.

"Did Uncle Roy take 'em?" Elysia asks suspiciously. "Blimpie wants an Uncle Roy pict're."

Maes Hughes kneels to let her down and grab her bear while he digs to the bottom of his overstuffed wallet.

"Well, here's one of me and Uncle Roy when we were kids," Hughes offers.

Mustang raises an eyebrow and reaches into his pocket for his ignition gloves. "Is that… the photograph that I think it is?"

"You can't burn this one, Roy. You were absolutely too adorable in that lion costume," Hughes says with an evil smile.

"Cute!" Elysia coos in agreement, touching the figures in the photo.

"What do you think, sweetheart? Shall we show this one to Blimpie and Aunt Riza?" Hughes asks. His ash-blonde daughter nods as quickly as Roy shakes his head. "I've got enough copies for everyone!"


	8. Bloodstained and Those that Remain

A/N: I own nothing. All right, all right, I lied; the epilogue is included within this chapter - or at least the one I had prewritten. The other bit could nearly stand on its own, and it needs a severe cutback on sap content, even from me...

* * *

This story ended in a phone booth, just outside of Central HQ. 

It had been Envy who had started the war in Ishval. The homunculus had disguised himself as a soldier and killed a child in order to drag Amestris into the bloodiest civil war the current generation would ever see. It had been this same homunculus, once again disguised as a soldier, that had followed Maes Hughes, a survivor of the Ishvalan slaughter, into the phone booth. There was a bitter kind of symmetry to it, Envy reflected as the force of the bullet knocked the knife from the soldier's hand. The homunculus fired again, just to insure that this hero of Ishval would not be going anywhere that his victims could not.

Envy had never cared much for vengeance, when it came to righting the wrongs humans had done to one another, although he found it occasionally amusing to watch the animals attempt to wreak what they called justice. He wondered if it the homunculi's plans counted as such. Humans seemed to like their violence in circles, much like those used by alchemists. The homunculi and their Father would give them a circle of violence soon enough.

* * *

That dead Ishvalan child had not been the reason Hughes had joined the military, but children had motivated Hughes for many years now. Elysia was the most obvious example, certainly - even before she had been born, the little girl had been able to stop her father's heart with the slightest movement of her arm or leg. The Elric boys had gotten Hughes involved with this case, and even before the two teenagers had discovered the origins of the philosopher's stones, Hughes had been quick to invite them over for a good meal and a day in a quiet, normal household - or at least as normal and quiet as any family the talkative Maes knew was capable of being. It had been the children in the schoolhouse that had driven Hughes to the military academy, or so he had said to his family. And long before, when he had been no more than a child himself, it had been a short, impetuous boy who had opened Hughes's eyes to the world beyond him. 

It was this boy, now grown into a man, that Maes Hughes had been determined to follow into the wider world as a child. It was this boy, now grown into a man, that Hughes had tried to lead towards safety and happiness to his final phone call. Hughes's glasses lay bent and twisted on the ground, not far from his fallen bloodied knife. There was a bitter kind of symmetry to it.

* * *

Or perhaps, it doesn't quite end there, for though Hughes is gone, the photographs still remain. And with them, there is a camera in the hands of an ash-blonde green eyed girl, a stack of investigation warrants, and Roy Mustang, the Flame Alchemist, who has Hawk's eyes and better looking after his back. 


End file.
